When last we saw him (in this column Oct. 11) condemned murderer Amos Ratliff was smiling on his way to a good night's sleep in the death cell within the Arkansas prison known as "the Walls," in Little Rock.
He had expected to be electrocuted at sunrise Sept. 30, 1921, but Arkansas Gov. Thomas McRae issued a stay. McRae had heard from the judge and prosecutor in the 4th District Circuit Court where Ratliff was condemned for the murder of Winifred Frazier, a 32-year-old farmer near Eureka Springs (newspapers also spelled her name Winfred, Winnifred, Winton or Lottie).
There was a troubling rumor that Ratliff was duped into confessing. And this rumor came up in the middle of a general furor about brutality in the state penal system. The "woman member" of McRae's new Honorary Penitentiary Commission was refusing to play ball with the ol' boys and was making a vigorous campaign against systemic inhumanity.
The Legislature created this honorary commission to root out financial mismanagement (in other words, make the system pay for itself) and to overlook humanitarian conditions at the Walls and the prison farms at Cummins in Lincoln County and Tucker in Jefferson County.
Did I say overlook? Commissioners were to oversee those conditions. Overlooking them was a choice.
Laura Nancy Cornelius Conner (1864-1952) of Augusta made a different choice (see arkansasonline.com/1018conner). She gathered complaints about the Tucker farm from prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families and marshaled widespread support — but not from her fellow commissioners and not so much from the Little Rock press.
Also, during that long ago September, Tom Slaughter, a notoriously good-looking criminal serving a life sentence for the murder of a Hot Springs sheriff, failed in his fourth escape attempt. In the process he killed a trusty and wounded three others (see more arkansasonline.com/1018tom). He was thwarted by a hero trusty. Slaughter's capture supposedly also prevented a "wholesale deliverance" of 200 convicts. That is, it was reported that rumors on the farm said stopping Slaughter had foiled a mass breakout.
While controversy raged over whether Conner's reformists — derided as "the sob squad" — encouraged such violence, McRae postponed Ratliff's execution for two weeks.
At Bentonville, Circuit Judge W.A. Dickson told a stringer for the Arkansas Gazette that after Ratliff was sentenced, 11 of his 12 jurors signed a petition saying they thought the man should have been allowed to speak in his own defense. Also, Ratliff's stepfather told him that "the confession was obtained by promises of leniency made by the sheriff and deputy prosecuting attorney of Carroll County."
Also, the judge had been doing some thinking about the fact that the public defender, appointed without pay, was not given time to prep before Ratliff's trial.
Yes, he said, the Ratliff rumor would be investigated, but not by him. He was too busy. Prosecutor John Nance would look into things and submit affidavits.
"What should be done in the event it is shown to the governor that the confession was obtained by promises of leniency is solely under the province of the governor, as the case has passed entirely out of the jurisdiction of this court," Dickson added.
MEANWHILE
While Ratliff enjoyed his final 14 days alive and McRae said nothing about what he thought of Nance's affidavits, the Rotary Club of Pine Bluff set out to answer Conner's campaign once and for all. It arranged an inspection day at Tucker farm. To defend the reputation of the decent people of Jefferson County, every prisoner lifted his shirt so inspectors could check for lash marks.
Guess what they found.
Not one single speck of torture or maltreatment. Not one. The prison farm was like unto a paradise. (No, I do not believe for one minute that was the case. Thank you for asking.)
This purported vindication of prison managers appeared on the front page of the Oct. 14 Gazette side by side with news that Amos Henry Ratliff would be dying that very morning in the electric chair.
And die he did. The Arkansas Democrat, an afternoon newspaper, reported that he walked calmly to the electric chair. In fact, the paper said he was "one of the calmest men that ever walked to the electric chair."
"Salvation Army members sang as he went to his death."
A few weeks later, the Gazette reported that his mother, Mrs. Eva Evans of Eureka Springs, had sent a request to a friend at Little Rock, Mrs. J.M. Williams of 2017 Spring St.
"Please find poor Amos' grave and erect a cheap monument for him," Evans wrote. "If this is not possible, just write his name on a heavy board."
FICTIONALIZING CRIME
We have now devoted three columns to an old story about blighted potential, one that demonstrates how anxious officials were 100 years ago to appear respectable.
Here's another little contemporary report that casts a somewhat different aura.
In newspapers around the nation, Ratliff was a tiny crime brief ... except where the papers subscribed to content from the Newspaper Enterprise Association of Cleveland, Ohio. These were papers like The Sandusky Star Journal at Sandusky, Ohio, and The Norfolk Post at Norfolk, Va. Some Arkansas papers did, too.
Headline from the Post:
Electric Chair Will Divorce Them
N.E.A. supplied artwork that was used on front pages: a large, closeup drawing of a woman's face, purported to be the face of Ratliff's wife, above a small mug-shot-type drawing of him looking very bald. We don't have the rights to print that, but this link will take you to it: arkansasonline.com/1018wow.
Datelined Little Rock, Ark., Sept. 24, the report began:
"Amos Ratliff will go to the death chair here Sept. 30 for committing two successive murders to win a woman.
"Strangely, the woman was his wife."
The first person he killed was someone he thought was his rival, and, this account claimed, he killed the second person while plotting to rob her in order to buy presents for his wife.
Each time he failed in his object, "for the wife for whom he shed a man's blood and a woman's blood has lost all affection for him."
She is quoted — or, rather, there are words in the report that the report says she said. I am inclined to doubt that this reporter ever spoke to her because he appears to have her name wrong. Whatever, the report has her saying something plausible, that she hadn't seen him, hadn't written to him and wasn't going to the pen to say goodbye to him.
"All I want is to forget him. I don't feel that I am responsible for his actions.
"He was jealous — and violent.
"He crushed the love he claimed for his own."
"When everything's all over — why, then I can start anew."
Ratliff is also quoted, possibly:
"I lost," he mutters to himself. "I lost — that's all." And then, a half-suppressed sob, "Cora — Cora."
His wife's name was given as Beulah in other publications, and it is Beulah in his online memorial at findagrave.com: arkansasonline.com/1018grave. (I suppose Cora could be a nickname, but Winifred Frazier was not called Lottie. See below.)
The N.E.A. report says the crime that sent Ratliff to the Tucker prison farm for two years was a robbery "to get pretty things for his wife." And then, supposedly, he came home to Carroll County unexpectedly, saw his "Cora" out driving with another man and shot the man on sight while Cora fled.
Out on bail, he got the idea that "if he could only get money, he could win his wife back with gifts."
So Ratliff set out to rob "Miss Lottie Frazier, a spinster, who was reputed to have $10,000 concealed on her premises."
Flash forward to Ratliff sitting in the death cell. One Rev. Steinhauer, missionary, labors long hours with Ratliff, trying to win him to contrition. At first he is obdurate and then despairing.
But now he says, "Tell the boys nothing good can come of evil. The wages of sin are death.
"I want Cora to forgive me — even — even if she can't love me."
That all smells just like fiction to me.
Email:
cstorey@adgnewsroom.com